shouldn’t just be shooting through them just because you can
All this really does is reward using civilian shields. Hamas can 10/7 all they want and all they have to do to avoid consequences is hide behind civilians who themselves have a non-zero chance of being volunteers.
That’s true. We should not necessarily be taking the most extreme measures to simply render the tactic fully ineffective, though. At a certain level it has to be allowed to work, because its leveraging against our humanity, which we should not be discarding too completely. Beyond even the ethical concerns, disregarding them too much creates future strategic problems by instilling more hatred in future generations.
It’s a question of where to draw the line. It’s been particularly egregious in Gaza, where unlike Lebanon, there was nowhere really safe to flee to.
Yeah, it’s very Nietzschian in that using civ shields as a basic strategy desensitizes your enemy to it and you get what we have now. People pushing the button with their feet up on the desk, eating a sandwich and watching whatever soap opera is on the TV. What’s that quote? ‘10 deaths is a tragedy, forty-thousand a statistic’? The worst part is no matter how this gets eventually resolved we’ll just be right back here within a decade afterwards because nobody learns the lesson.
All this really does is reward using civilian shields. Hamas can 10/7 all they want and all they have to do to avoid consequences is hide behind civilians who themselves have a non-zero chance of being volunteers.
That’s true. We should not necessarily be taking the most extreme measures to simply render the tactic fully ineffective, though. At a certain level it has to be allowed to work, because its leveraging against our humanity, which we should not be discarding too completely. Beyond even the ethical concerns, disregarding them too much creates future strategic problems by instilling more hatred in future generations.
It’s a question of where to draw the line. It’s been particularly egregious in Gaza, where unlike Lebanon, there was nowhere really safe to flee to.
Yeah, it’s very Nietzschian in that using civ shields as a basic strategy desensitizes your enemy to it and you get what we have now. People pushing the button with their feet up on the desk, eating a sandwich and watching whatever soap opera is on the TV. What’s that quote? ‘10 deaths is a tragedy, forty-thousand a statistic’? The worst part is no matter how this gets eventually resolved we’ll just be right back here within a decade afterwards because nobody learns the lesson.